Unruly Archives: Literary form and the Social Media Imaginary

Abstract:Within literary studies, social media is treated as a fringe extension of a history of reading centered on print culture and dominated by the form of the novel. This has led to the assumption that the impact of social media has not been significant enough to warrant a formal and aesthetic study. Working specifically with Facebook and "Dear Ijeawele," Chimamanda Adichie's feminist manifesto posted on Facebook in 2016, this article challenges that notion by arguing that the social media platform—its design features, affective architecture, epistemological concerns, and ideological investments—constitutes a new discursive context for literary form.